


she could be a thorn in my side

by thatsparrow



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Minor Spoilers: Episode 2, Missing Scene, UnDeadwood Mini-series (Critical Role)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 05:02:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21247889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: "Not that this hasn't been a terribly exciting evening, but I suppose I best be getting back to—to my husband.""Given all we've seen tonight—" Sharpe says, toeing at one of the twice-dead horse thieves, "—probably isn't safe for anyone to be walking off alone. Might not be a bad idea if you had some company heading back."[minor spoilers for episode 2]





	she could be a thorn in my side

**Author's Note:**

> title from "broken horse" by freelance whales

"Not that this hasn't been a terribly exciting evening, but I suppose I best be getting back to—to my husband."

For as even-keeled as Mrs. Whitlock had seemed thus far—steadfast even in the face of that fucking snake-and-miner barbecue and the undead outlaws—her composure reliably slips whenever the subject of Mr. Whitlock arises. Funny. Sharpe would've figured a southern belle like her for having been schooled in a better poker face.

"Given all we've seen tonight—" Sharpe says, toeing at one of the twice-dead horse thieves, "—probably isn't safe for anyone to be walking off alone. Might not be a bad idea if you had some company heading back."

"Are you volunteering for the task, Mr. Sharpe?" 

He glances up at Mrs. Landisman. "I can be, if Mrs. Whitlock has no objections."

"No," Mrs. Whitlock says in response to his raised eyebrow. "I don't object, that is." He nods at her, and she returns the gesture with that familiar, tight-lipped smile of hers. Now _ that _ does strike him as evidence of her upper crust upbringing.

"We'll reconvene in the morning, then?" the Reverend asks, still a little jittery in the hands. Holy vows aside, seems to Sharpe like he could use a few fingers of whiskey or one of the Gem's women to smooth that scared-cat shiver from his spine. "Perhaps in the lobby of the Bullock Hotel before checking in with Mr. Swearengen?"

"Fine by me." Fogg eases back against one of the hitching posts, thumbs tucked into his gun belt like his hands weren't shooting fucking _ lightning _ not five minutes back. That's Fogg, the Reverend, and Mrs. Whitlock all having shown signs of the supernatural, to say nothing of whatever god-cursed energy he and Mrs. Landisman might have wrapped around their bones, too. Sharpe can't imagine finding answers tonight, though, so he's willing to save that particular headache for the morning. As the others make their goodbyes and turn down the thoroughfare towards Bullock's hotel, he tilts his head towards Mrs. Whitlock. "You ready?"

"More ready for this, I'm sure, than anything else that transpired today." She lets out a quick sigh, seems to shake the unease from her shoulders like a horse brushing off stable flies. Then she holds out her arm, crooked at the elbow. "Shall we?"

Sharpe glances down at her. "What, you worried about gettin' lost?"

"It's decorum."

He snorts.

"I didn't invent manners, Mr. Sharpe."

"But you buy into that bullshit? As if you can't handle your own."

She smiles a little, a slight twist surprising the even line of her mouth. "I don't particularly_, _ but my father does. He's very much a man of—"

"Pageantry?"

"Propriety," she says, the twitch of her mouth threatening a deeper smile. "Though, yes, that too."

She still hasn't lowered her arm, so Sharpe concedes with a short exhale of his own, threads the hook of his own elbow through the curve of hers, settling himself next to her side in the process. From here, he's at just the right angle to see a leftover ribbon of dirt smudged behind her ear from their excursion out of town, to catch the lingering satin-smooth smell of the rose-scented perfume she'd spritzed onto her neck in the morning. _ Propriety_, Sharpe thinks to himself with a shake of his head. As if he's supposed to feel anything other than distinctly improper with the warmth of her arm a persistent weight against his own.

"Clayton is fine, for the record," he says after a few paces in step beside her, clearing his throat some.

"Hm?"

"I think we're past the point of me needin' to be 'Mr. Sharpe.' Granted, it mightn't be the proper form of address, but just Clayton is alright by me."

Mrs. Whitlock nods. "Very well. Clayton, then." It sounds new coming from her—the way she tests it out with her sideways Atlanta accent—but not unpleasantly so. "While we're on the subject, I'd prefer Arabella, if you don't mind." Her mouth twists again, but where before it'd struck him as her trying to bite back a smile, this looks like her swallowing around the taste of something sour. "I know I should be making the effort to adjust, but I find 'Mrs. Whitlock' still doesn't feel entirely fitting. I wouldn't mind setting it aside so long as my—husband doesn't overhear."

Seems the title isn't the only thing that hasn't quite settled around her shoulders. As her thumb plays absent at her wedding ring, Sharpe sees that she's still an even shade of peach below the knuckle; she either hasn't been wearing it long enough or regularly enough to have tanned a white stripe of skin underneath it.

"Am I steppin' out of line to ask about that?" He inclines his head towards her hand. "You bein' wedded to Mr. Whitlock, I mean."

Arabella pauses, though it seems more from consideration than offense. "I suppose it depends on the question. What do you want to know?"

Sharpe chews it over for a moment. "Admittedly, my view on the matter is, uh—limited, at best, but you don't strike me as terribly enamored with the man."

She raises an eyebrow at him. "Is that what you want to know? Whether or not I love my husband?"

"No disrespect intended, Arabella, but unless you've got a mighty funny way of showing your affections, then, no, that's not a question I need answered."

"So what are you asking?"

"Guess I'm wonderin' what compels a woman like you to travel halfway 'cross the country for a marriage like that." 

She lets out a breath that might be her version of a laugh. "Enlighten me, Mr. Sharpe, what that's supposed to mean—_a woman like me_." If her slipping back into a more formal address is intended as a slight against him, she doesn't show it on her face.

"Certainly nothin' bad, if that's what you're thinking." Had that been an off-color thing to say? He hadn't meant it as such. "Steady, I suppose. Not so easily shaken. More grit than some other silver-spoon folks I've met—you know, the sort with soft hands and a softer character."

"Mhm." He'd been wrong about her poker face; she could be holding a full house or ace-high and he wouldn't know the difference. "And I suppose you know me well enough to make such a judgment?"

"Seen you stare down those fucking snake things without runnin' for the hills. Seen you go up against those hanged horse thieves seemin' fairly unflappable." He lowers his voice some, pitched just above a whisper. "Seen you shoot a sunbeam from your hands easier'n lighting a campfire. And all that's just in the past twelve hours. In fact, Mrs. Whitlock, given what I've seen of you today, I'd hazard sayin' I might know you better than your husband does."

"Sorry to disappoint, Mr. Sharpe," she says, returning to that tight-mouthed smile of hers, "but that's a fairly low bar to clear."

That brings them back to her marriage again, and his original question still left unanswered. Perhaps that had been a step too far. Fair enough; no one's ever mistaken him for a man with manners. Even for the new chill in her tone, though, blown in like an early snowfront over the hills, she hasn't made a move to step away from him. Were he to guess, Sharpe figures it likely that there's nothing untoward he could say about her marriage that she hasn't already thought of herself.

The silence carries them the rest of the way from the thoroughfare back to the house she shares with Whitlock. Arabella slows to a stop when they're still a dozen yards out from the porch, leaving little chance of Mr. Whitlock spying her through the window with some other man—though, from what he's heard of Whitlock, Sharpe wonders how much he'd care. He lets his own arm slide free from hers as she steps away, his hand moving back to rest on the grip of his pistol.

"Guess this is goodnight, then."

"Yes, I do believe I can make it the rest of the way on my own. Thank you, though, for your accompaniment. I appreciate it."

His accompaniment, then, but not necessarily his company. Sharpe supposes that shouldn't surprise him; she's used to brushing shoulders with a different class of folk.

"Anytime, Mrs. Whitlock."

She gives him a nod, then turns back toward the house, Sharpe keeping an eye on her until she's safe inside. Even if the chances of something happening before she makes it through the door are slim, they aren't nonexistent, and it seems a shame, somehow, to risk their last conversation being such an—uneven one. Sharpe does like the grit in her bones, even if she hadn't taken the comment quite as he'd intended—sturdy as steel where some folks are soft and breakable as gold, all shine that gives way under the barest pressure. Not unlike her wedding ring, and likely her marriage, too, though the shine already seems to be flaking away there, if it hadn't been dulled from the start.

Then again, Sharpe thinks as he turns back toward the thoroughfare, not as if her or her husband are any of his concern, are they? Who's he to care if she seems ill-suited to her marriage. His business with her extends as far as their morning appointment with Mr. Swearengen and likely no further. It's a certain sort of foolishness to waste so much thought on a woman he likely won't be speaking to in a week, and, while he's been accused of being a great many things, he's never been mistaken for foolish.

No—Sharpe decides, taking a deep breath of the chilled autumn air and turning his thoughts in another direction—and so it's time to quit being foolish about this, too.

(Still, as he begins his walk back to town, there's a part of him that can still feel the phantom warmth of Arabella's arm against his own, that thinks he can catch the smell of her perfume lingering beside him like she's left a rose in the pocket of his coat.)


End file.
